The Pro Bono Collaborative Project Spotlight: Rwu Law Alums Providing Pro Bono Through The Pbc (September 20, 2018), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Pro Bono Collaborative Staff Publications

The Diminishing Duty Of Loyalty, Julian Velasco

Journal Articles

Fiduciary duties comprise an integral part of corporate law. It is generally understood that directors owe the corporation and its shareholders two fiduciary duties: the duty of care and the duty of loyalty. Although both duties are firmly established in corporate law, they are not treated equally. It is generally understood that the duty of loyalty is enforced far more rigorously than the duty of care. The justification for this dichotomy is twofold. First, differential treatment is appropriate because of the relative urgencies of the underlying subject matter: loyalty issues pose greater risks than do care issues. Second, the deference ...

The Privilege Doctrines--Are They Just Another Discovery Tool Utilized By The Tobacco Industry To Conceal Damaging Information?, Christine Hatfield

Pace Law Review

This Comment will analyze the tobacco companies' use of the privilege doctrines to avoid litigation over the past thirty years, specifically focusing on the last fifteen years of litigation between this industry and its accusers. Part II of this Comment will discuss the pertinent discovery rules and the manner in which they are abused. Part III will examine the development, scope and limitations of the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrines, considering with particularity the corporate context and the applicability of the crime-fraud exception to these doctrines. Part IV will review the case law of the tobacco litigation, focusing on ...

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is a revised version of our earlier listing of vertical merger enforcement actions by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission since 1994. This revised listing includes 58 vertical matters beginning in 1994 through July 2018. It includes challenges and certain proposed transactions that were abandoned in the face of Agency concerns. This listing can be treated as an Appendix to Steven C. Salop and Daniel P. Culley, Revising the Vertical Merger Guidelines: Policy Issues and an Interim Guide for Practitioners, 4 Journal of Antitrust Enforcement 1 (2016).

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

In this Article we show that Citizens United v. FEC, arguably the most important First Amendment case of the new millennium, is predicated on a fundamental misconception about the nature of the corporation. Specifically, Citizens United v. FEC, which prohibited the government from restricting independent expenditures for corporate communications, and held that corporations enjoy the same free speech rights to engage in political spending as human citizens, is grounded on the erroneous theory that corporations are “associations of citizens” rather than what they actually are: independent legal entities distinct from those who own their stock. Our contribution to the literature ...

Faculty Scholarship

We provide empirical evidence that many multi-product firms have each participated in several cartels over the past 50 years. Standard analysis of cartel conduct, as well as enforcement policy, is rooted in the presumption that each cartel in which a given firm participates is a singular activity, independent of other cartel conduct by the firm. We argue that this analysis is deficient in many respects in the face of serial collusion by multi-product firms. We offer policy recommendations to reign in serial collusion, including a mandatory coordinated effects review for any merger involving a serial colluder, regardless of the apparent ...

Notre Dame Law Review

Part I of this Note introduces the appraisal remedy, outlining its history, purpose, and modern justifications. It also details the procedural process for bringing an appraisal claim. Part II examines the rise of appraisal in its current arbitrage form, delving into the various reasons set forth to explain its rise, as well as how the recent amendments to the Delaware appraisal statute have addressed these issues. This Part also analyzes Delaware’s recent merger price “presumption” trend. Part III puts forth several arguments in light of this trend, with the intent that such arguments will both justify and protect the ...

The Wealth Gap And The Racial Disparities In The Startup Ecosystem, Lynnise E. Pantin

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Although much attention has been given to structural inequality as it manifests in the criminal justice context, little has been said about economic inequality as it relates to the startup ecosystem. This Article details how the historic creation of the wealth gap affects entrepreneurship, highlighting how the wealth gap adversely impacts entrepreneurs of color. Entrepreneurship is a compelling solution to wealth inequality, but wealth inequality can be an impediment to success in entrepreneurship. This Article explains how the United States’ history of bolstering wealth creation for some, while inhibiting wealth creation for people of color, matters for understanding the startup ...

Georgia Business Court Opinions

Shareholder Collaboration, Jill E. Fisch, Simone M. Sepe

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Two models dominate the debate on the theory of the firm. Under the management-power model, decision-making power exclusively belongs to corporate insiders (officers and directors). The competing shareholder-power model contemplates increasing shareholder power to limit managerial authority. Both models are focused on managerial agency costs and address the appropriate allocation of power between insiders and shareholders to minimize these costs. Both models also assume that insiders and shareholders are engaged in a competitive struggle for corporate power.

Corporate practice has moved on, however. Increasingly, the insider-shareholder dynamic is collaborative, not competitive. This Article traces the development of insider-shareholder collaboration and ...

On The Continuing Misuse Of Event Studies: The Example Of Bessen And Meurer, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.

Glynn Lunney

The Certification Paradox, Jonathan M. Barnett

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

It is commonly observed that certification intermediaries mitigate informational asymmetries by “lending” reputational capital to support transacting parties’ quality commitments. However, this proposition is challenged by cases in which well-established intermediaries have failed to detect fraud, misrepresentation and other misbehavior. The “certification paradox” provides a more nuanced account that anticipates both the general success, and periodic failure, of certification intermediaries. Transacting parties minimize search and evaluation costs by using a small number of certification intermediaries with large stocks of reputational capital. Incumbent certifiers are substantially protected by entrants’ high costs of accumulating sufficient reputational capital and users’ high costs of ...

The Sec And Foreign Private Issuers: A Path To Optimal Public Enforcement, Yuliya Guseva

Boston College Law Review

This Article examines SEC enforcement policies and seeks to find the optimum approach to enforcement against foreign private issuers. My previous empirical study of securities class actions against foreign firms identified a number of crucial developments that mainly occurred after Morrison v. National Australia Bank. In Morrison, the Supreme Court sought to limit the extraterritorial reach of the antifraud provisions of the U.S. securities laws. The Court has scaled down the exposure of foreign issuers to securities liability risk, particularly in class-action litigation. If the Supreme Court in Morrison has created a risky enforcement lacuna on the side of ...

Agribusiness And Antitrust: The Bayer-Monsanto Merger, Its Legality, And Its Effect On The United States And European Union, Aleah Douglas

The Global Business Law Review

This note examines the current and historical antitrust laws of the United States and the European Union as they relate to the currently pending merger between Bayer and Monsanto. It focuses alternatively on the legality of the merger under modern antitrust laws and the impact such a deal could have on the agribusiness industry in both Europe and the United States. Ultimately, the note argues that the Bayer-Monsanto merger is illegal and should be blocked by the proper authorities in the United States and the European Union.

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

The increasing percentage of the modern capital markets owned by passive investors – index funds and ETFs – has received extensive media and academic attention. This growing ownership concentration as well as the potential power of passive investors to affect both corporate governance and operational decision-making at their portfolio firms has led some commentators to call for passive investors to be subject to increased regulation and even disenfranchisement. These reactions fail to account for the institutional structure of passive investors and the market context in which they operate. Specifically, this literature assumes that passive investors compete primarily on cost and that, as ...

Bankruptcy’S Uneasy Shift To A Contract Paradigm, David A. Skeel Jr., George Triantis

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

The most dramatic development in twenty-first century bankruptcy practice has been the increasing use of contracts to shape the bankruptcy process. To explain the new contract paradigm—our principal objective in this Article-- we begin by examining the structure of current bankruptcy law. Although the Bankruptcy Code of 1978 has long been viewed as mandatory, its voting and cramdown rules, among others, invite considerable contracting. The emerging paradigm is asymmetric, however. While the Code and bankruptcy practice allow for ex post contracting, ex ante contracts are viewed with suspicion.